People use WordPress plugins to achieve multiple objectives: increase traffic, ensure website security, and make the site faster. But do we have WP Rocket alternatives that produce better results? Let’s answer these questions in this post!
It would be needless to explain why you need plugins to improve the permanence of your blog or website. Whether you’re a business owner, blogger, or marketer, you need a fast and secure website to inspire your audience and make them take the intended actions.
This is where plugins help you fix problems and optimize your site. However, you can’t install too many WordPress plugins as it can slow down your site. Besides, using certain plugins in combination can lead to conflicts and poor performance.
I have been using a number of plugins on my blog that get millions of visitors every year. If you browse through my site right now, you will get a smooth experience. Why? Because I have used the right plugins that work together to deliver an amazing user experience. WP Rocket is one of my favorites. But I would like you to not only explore the great features of WP Rocket plugin but also watch out for alternatives.
In this post, we will briefly review the WP Rocket WordPress plugin and then move on to explore the alternatives that may suit your needs better.
WordPress plugins and website speed
Have you ever come across a website that is depressingly slow? I am sure you do. We often land on such sites and end up clicking the back button out of frustration. A slow website is not at all an option in a competitive environment. It doesn’t matter how great your content is, your visitors will find their solutions elsewhere if your site is slow. If your WordPress website is slow, it’s time for you to figure out how WordPress plugins can help you fix this problem.
Before we talk about WordPress plugins, it’s important to take a quick look at some solutions to make your site faster. Here are some proven ways to do so:
- A dependable hosting provider
- Lightweight and fast WordPress themes that reduce server strain
- Updating your website consistently
- Minified JS and CSS files
- Properly compressed images
Every plugin comes with varying features and functions. Some are good for speed optimization, others are great at handling security concerns. Let’s review some of the prominent features of WP Rocket!
What is WP Rocket plugin?
A WordPress site can put a lot of burden on your server which creates the possibility of a crashed web server. To ensure fast site speed and avoid stress on your server, you need a caching plugin like WP Rocket.
WP Rocket is an effective WordPress plugin that ensures super-fast website performance. It builds a website cache without waiting for a command to save a page to cache. Features like CDN support, minification, and DNS prefetching improve your page load time.
You can find plenty of other caching WordPress plugins in the market, but WP Rocket is the top priority of most bloggers and website owners. Why? It makes configuration so much covenant. A couple of clicks is what it takes to set WP Rocket up. If you haven’t tested WP Rocket plugin yet, make sure to use it before experimenting with anything else.
WP Rocket pricing
WP Rocket is a premium plugin that starts from $49/year which gives you one year of support and updates for one website. For 3 websites, the price goes up to $99/year.
WP Rocket prominent features
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- Page caching
- GZIP compression
- Cache preloading
- Browser caching
- eCommerce optimization
- Excellent compatibility
You don’t need to possess coding knowledge to configure this plugin. All you need to do is turn on the caching feature and watch your website speed improve. Another amazing feature is pre-caching where your web pages are pre-cached before anyone visits your website. Minification of CSS and JS files further improves the performance of your site.
So far as compatibility is concerned, WP Rocket works fine with web hosts like Cloudways, WP Engine, a2 Hosting, and SiteGround. It is also compatible with most CDNS including translation plugins, Yoast SEO, and WordPress Multisite.
Overall, WP Rocket caching plugin makes it super easy to handle everything you need to optimize a WordPress-powered platform. However, I highly recommend WP Rocket as the best caching plugin.
Related: WP Rocket Review: Is It The Right Caching Plugin For Your Blog?
7 Best WP Rocket Alternatives
I understand not everyone is willing to use a premium caching solution like WP Rocket. So, let’s see what else we can use to optimize a WordPress website:
1. W3 Total Cache
The first WP Rocket alternative on my list is W3 Total Cache which helps you boost your SEO results, user experience, and site performance.
When it comes to configuration, W3TC is not a super user-friendly plugin. However, it provides the freedom to tailor your caching needs. Here are some of the benefits of using W3TC:
- Significant improvement in overall site performance
- Improvements in search engine result page rankings
- Better conversion rates which ultimately boost your site’s rank
- Browser caching
- Optimized progressive render
- Reduced page load time
- Improved web server performance
- Up to 80% bandwidth savings
The only drawback of W3TC is the complexity of use and lack of user-friendliness. However, it’s a free caching plugin that offers a variety of benefits.
2. WP Smush
With 1+ million active installations, WP Smush enables you to reduce the size of your images without compromising the quality and integrity. We all know that image optimization can make a website load faster. You can compress, resize, and improve any image in your directory. If images are slowing down your site, you should consider using WP smush. It’s a free plugin that can handle up to 50 images at once.
Smush is an award-winning image optimization and compression plugin for WordPress. You can set a max width and height to scale down large images. With incorrect size image detection, it becomes easy to locate images that are affecting your site speed. Above all, there’s no daily, weekly, or monthly limit. Smush processes everything from PNG to GIF files.
3. WP Super Cache
Super Cache is another great caching plugin from WordPress. It generates static HTML files from a dynamic WordPress blog. And then, instead of processing the heavier PHP script, your web server serves a static HTML file to the majority of your users. While most of your users are served with static HTML files, others will be served with custom cached files.
The advanced settings in Super Cache let you GZIP compression, browser caching, how content is cached, and how often cache should be updated. You can preload content into the cache. If we look at the cons of WP Super Cache, lack of user-friendliness will be on top as it involves complex features.
4. WP Fastest Cache
Fastest Cache doesn’t offer too much novelty. However, you will get a few customization options that may serve your needs. Rated 4.8/5.0 on WordPress Plugin Directory, Fastest Cache has over 10,000 active installs. It is surely not the fastest caching plugin, but it can considerably improve your site’s speed.
Fastest Cache is a configuration-free plugin developed to make speed optimization easy for all kinds of WordPress users. GZIP compression, minification of HTML and CSS, and good compatibility, browser caching, CDN, and SSL support are key features of WP Fastest Cache.
5. Breeze by Cloudways
Cloudways, a popular cloud hosting platform, developed Breeze caching plugin for WordPress users. It is a simple and easy-to-use plugin that helps you improve the speed of your website with ease, especially if you’re hosting your website on Cloudways. So, a combination of Breeze and Cloudways hosting can take your website performance to the next level.
Here are some of the features of Breeze:
- File exclusion: It enables you to exclude caching on individual URLs and file types.
- Minification and grouping: You can easily minify and combine CSS, HTML, and JS files to reduce file size.
- GZIP Compression: It becomes easy to reduce the overall size of your files and download time.
- CDN support: Breeze supports CDN integration: CSS files and other content can be served via CDN.
- WooCommerce compatibility: Breeze is WooCommerce compatible: you don’t need any special configuration.
- Database optimization: You can optimize your database with Breeze by cleaning up post revisions, trash backs, pingbacks, auto-drafted content, and more.
- Live chat support: You can reach out to Breeze’s 24/7 live support to get help.
Breeze is surely one of the WP Rocket alternatives that offer competitive features. However, Breeze isn’t a free-to-use caching plugin. It starts from $10/mon. They offer a free trial in case you want to test before making a decision.
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6. SG Optimizer
SiteGround has developed a WordPress cache plugin called SG Optimizer. It is designed for people hosting their WordPress site with SiteGround. SG Optimizer is a good plugin for both beginner and advanced users. In addition to basic features like file compression and minification, SG Optimizer offers the following features:
- Environment optimization: this tab enables you to configure various options from HTTPS to database maintenance.
- Frontend optimization: it helps you optimize the frontend code to ensure faster speed. It includes functions like optimizing JS files and minifying the HTML output.
- Media optimization: You can also optimize images and videos using advanced features.
- Performance test: A built-in tool enables you to test the performance of your site after optimizing with SG Optimizer plugin.
7. SuperCacher
SuperCacher is another product from SiteGround. It is a WordPress caching plugin for those using SiteGround hosting services. If you’re already using SiteGround’s shared hosting plans, don’t forget to check out their caching service. It comes with four caching options:
- Static
- Dynamic
- Memcached
- HHVM
Each category offers a set of different features. Nonetheless, the prime focus of this plugin is to help you improve the performance of your site no matter the number of people visiting your site. With SuperCacher, you can achieve a four times faster loading speed.
Which one is the best, free WP Rocket Alternative?
We’ve discussed 7 WP Rocket alternatives that have the potential to meet your website performance needs. However, it’s hard to choose which is an ideal solution for your WordPress site. It all depends on your unique needs and requirements. Whether you want to go with WP Rocket or its alternatives, keep in mind that your website speed is one of the factors that determine your online success.
As I mentioned earlier, your great content is useless if you don’t have a powerful website. From hosting and website structure to design and on-page elements, there are so many things that determine the speed and search engine performance of your site. So, make sure to use the right plugins for your WordPress site. If you find it hard to choose the right product, go with WP Rocket which is a comprehensive and highly effective WordPress caching plugin.
If you want your audience to keep visiting your website and find their favorite content with great ease, focus on your site’s performance. Test it on a regular basis and find the areas that can be improved. Adding a caching plugin to your WordPress would be a good first step towards a lightning-fast website.
